Taliban Bomb Kills 32 In Islamabad

You reap what you sow. Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, has a long and complicated history with various branches of the Taliban. Sometimes the ISI finds them useful. And sometimes the ISI kills them (or tries to).

Today in Islamabad, at least 30-two people were killed and more than one hundred and 20-five others were injured when the Taliban detonated a car bomb in front of ISI headquarters in Pakistan’s third-largest city. Time magazine reports:

The remote-controlled bomb also devastated a gas station and an office of Pakistan’s state airline in the industrial city. Police said the offices of a “sensitive” security agency were nearby but were not damaged in the attack.

Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said militants detonated the bomb by remote control and that the target was the Inter-Services Intelligence, a powerful agency that plays a major role in Pakistan’s fight against Islamist militants.

He said the attack was revenge for the shooting of militant commander Omar Kundi in Faisalabad last year by security forces.

Islamist militants seeking to overthrow the government have bombed hundreds of police, army, commercial and civilian targets in Pakistan over the past three years. ISI offices in the Punjabi cities of Multan and Lahore have been attacked, as well as in the northwest city of Peshawar.